


planting seeds in a garden you desperately want to see

by cpt_winniethepooh



Series: Happy Steve Bingo fills [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Captain America Steve Rogers, Dogs, Domestic, Gardening, Healing, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Past Issues, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, captains america
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 11:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16764598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh
Summary: Bucky comes back home from a mission to find that Steve has done something nice for him.Or at least he tried to, but leave it to Steven Grant Rogers to be bested by pots and planting seed mixes.





	planting seeds in a garden you desperately want to see

**Author's Note:**

> SO this is like a prequel oneshot for my fic [The Changes We Dread](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14429967), and I think the universe is self explanatory enough, but just in case: Bucky and Steve are both Caps and have woken up in the 21st century together, had a lot of issues and are working on resolving them. (And I should be working on actually writing said waking up, but hey, why start a story at the beginning when you can jump ahead?) 
> 
> Written for the [Happy Steve Bingo](https://happystevebingo.tumblr.com/) for the prompt "rooftop/indoor farming for novices".

Bucky put the shield down next to the door and pulled his mask off.

God, this had been a tiring mission.

Nails clicking on the floor warned him of the arrival of the dogs, and sure enough, first Mary, then Isaac came scrambling to him, and the Captain America uniform was instantly covered with fur.

“Hi guys,” Bucky knelt down to be coated in saliva too. Isaac whined and Mary tried to climb into his lap. “Miss me?”

The dogs didn’t answer, which wasn’t a surprise, but what was that _Steve_ didn’t answer, either. But he was home, Bucky heard soft noises from the kitchen, and so Steve must’ve heard him too.

He hoped they weren’t back to the passive-agressive non-talking and cold shoulders that described their relationship, or lack thereof, after their thawing out. Even the mere idea had his stomach clenching up, and right, enough of this shit.

“Steve?” he asked and went to look for him.

“Uh, in here,” Steve replied hastily, and the rock in Bucky’s stomach evaporated. Steve's tone let him know that nothing serious had happened.

He reconsidered, however, when he found his pristine, state of the art kitchen absolutely _covered_ in dirt. Not dust. Not ingredients. _Dirt_.

“What the hell,” he said.

Steve was in the middle of it all, standing at the table over various pots, hands brown up to the elbow, all over a white shirt he — for some reason — had decided would be a good idea for whatever it was he was up to, and even his forehead was dirty, probably because he forgot about the mess on his hands. He looked like a deer that took a mud-bath before being caught in headlights.

“I wasn’t expecting you yet,” he said.

“Evidently,” Bucky agreed. “We got compromised and had to evacuate.”

“I missed that,” Steve nodded at the laptop on the counter that had escaped Bucky’s attention — Steve tended to listen in on missions, and so did Bucky, official approval or not; they still needed to know the other was all right. But Steve had apparently managed to drench the device in the dirt, too, based on the state of the barely visible keyboard and the dark screen. “…I had an accident but I think Tony could repair it.”

“I’m sure he could,” Bucky agreed, thinking about his own left arm. “But Steve, what even are you doing?”

Steve sighed and rubbed his nose, getting even more resemblance to that of an overgrown garden gnome.

“I was trying to make a greenhouse for you,” he explained. Which explained nothing.

“A what? Why?”

“Because you love your flowers,” Steve said. He let his hand fell to the side, and Isaac immediately rushed to him, leaving cute little footprints of soil on the floor. “Isaac, no!”

But the dogs had never listened to Steve, and no wonder: it had been Bucky who had stayed at home and played with them, trained them and fed them while his arm had been being repaired, and while Steve had been out there to save the world from aliens and other shit.

“Mary, Isaac, here,” Bucky ordered, and both dogs hurried to him with tails wagging to sit down at his side. “We’ll have to wash them after this is cleaned up, too.”

“I know,” Steve did a masterful imitation of the huskies with his blue puppy eyes. “I wanted to get it all done before you came back.”

“Just ‘cause I love flowers?”

That felt nice, thouhg. A Steve that showed he cared instead of closing himself off emotionally.

“And food,” Steve said with a tiny smile. “You love cooking and I thought you'd like to have some fresh stuff here. That we can grow.”

The small speck of warmth in Bucky’s chest grew tenfold.

“That’d be nice,” he said, more concerned with _Steve_ than the plants, because really — he was fine with the farmer’s market, and having spent his entire life in Brooklyn he never really entertained the idea of a _house_ with a garden or growing his own food — the white picket fence was something that presupposed a wife and two point five kids, too, and neither him nor Steve had the right equipment for that. Or the right laws, until they woke up in a much more queer-friendly future.

But _Steve._ Steve who had always been too wired, too fighty for domestic life, _especially_ in the future, so much so that he literally threw everything down to rush back into the fight, and now _Steve_ wanted to make something for Bucky. Something _with_ Bucky.

God, Bucky loved this man so much. Sure he drove Bucky up the wall sometimes, but Bucky couldn't — and definitely didn't want to imagine a life without him. Neither in the past or in the future.

“I’ll clean up this mess, just give me some time,” Steve said, discouraged. “You can change out of the outfit in the meantime, I know it gets unconfortable…”

It _was_ already uncomfortable, but at the moment Bucky couldn’t have cared less because his heart was breaking into tiny little pieces, because Steve feared he may be mad at him. For making a mess of his kitchen. Which, fair enough, had happened before — but not like this, never because Steve wanted to do something nice for him, but because neither of them knew how to deal with their issues and they somehow always took it out on each other.

“Nah, I just — can I help, you know, with the actual potting?”

Steve just looked at him. “I mean, if you want?”

“I do want,” Bucky said, and he took his harness and jacket off, because being in only uniform pants and undershirt was better, and ignored his exhaustion and bruises as he grabbed a broom to clean up the floor. “What are we growing?”

And no matter that they had been together since the 30s, that little word — _we_ — still felt better than any other on his tongue.

“Herbs,” Steve said, and lifted a few small paperbags, the labels reading _basil_ , _oregano, peppermint, parsley, thyme, rosemary, lemongrass._ “I looked some tutorials up but Mary knocked into me in one of her frantic rounds, you know, and I dropped the bag of soil.”

“She does that,” Bucky said after he ordered Mary back, because she reacted to hearing her name by trying to make her way to Steve.

They cleaned most of the mess up, put the unresponsive laptop aside, and Bucky used his phone to look up how they were supposed to plant the seeds. Turns out it required no expertise whatsoever, other than you not be named Steven Grant Rogers.

They reused what they could from the flyaway soil to fill the small, rectangualr pots, and then they put the seeds on top, only to be covered by a thin layer. Then they watered them without drenching them completely, and Bucky had to smile at how well he and Steve worked together: always in unison, always knowing where the other was or what they needed.

Steve took it on to himself to write the names on plastic sticks so they would know what it what, because Bucky got very lazy with his handwriting in an age when nowhere was it needed. And then they covered them with a clear plastic top to prevent the heat and moisture escaping.

Bucky looked at the row pots all sitting side by side, and while they looked quite sad with only the soil visible, his heart grew twice its size just from the sight.

_Steve did this for him._

“It’s not even my birthday,” Bucky said aloud.

Steve looked at him questioningly.

“Thank you,” Bucky told him.

A smile appeared on Steve’s face.

“You always make me something nice when I get home from long missions,” he said. “But I thought I shouldn’t try cooking.”

“Yeah, coming home to a burnt-down apartment isn’t a life goal,” Bucky agreed, and Steve punched his arm.

“But I also had an incognito mission, so I couldn’t get to it earlier,” Steve finished. “I would’ve loved to surprise you.”

“You have,” Bucky promised, and stepped close to Steve.

“I’m dirty,” Steve warned with faux shiness.

“And I’m sweaty, who cares,” Bucky grinned, and Steve slid up to him, put his arms around his neck and kissed him fiercely.

“Let’s shower together,” Steve said, which was the most genius idea Bucky had heard in days. And which was also the moment Isaac’s had enough of being neglected and began to sing.

Bucky broke away from Steve’s mouth reluctantly. “Let’s shower _them_ first,” he sighed.

Steve snorted. “Running a second mission would be less tiring,” he said. “We’ll just fall asleep afterwards.”

“Well, we’ll both be here after a nap,” Bucky said. “We can have sex whenever we want, you know.”

Steve’s smile lit up Bucky’s mind, body and soul. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> (i hope this qualifies as a happy steve story; i wanted to write it from steve's pov but that would be about his worries about bucky so i decided against it.)
> 
> ((please check out [The Changes We Dread](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14429967) I poured my heart and soul into it))


End file.
